Realm I of VIII
The World Tree
The crystal heart of Aetheryn
At the center of everything rises the World Tree, its trunk split around a column of living crystal that burns white, violet and blue. The crown spreads across half the sky in gold, green and blossom pink, and long veils of moss and vine hang from every branch.
Beneath the roots, a sanctuary of pale arches and stairways opens onto a pool of light. From there the River of Life begins its rainbow descent toward the falls.
Look closer
- The crystal core, brightest where the trunk divides
- Pink and violet blossoms scattered through the golden crown
- The stairway of the root sanctuary
- Slender falls of light dropping from the isles beside the trunk
Zero fairies hide in this realm.
In our world
The tree at the center of the Norse worlds
Norse cosmology was held together by Yggdrasil, an immense ash whose three roots reached three wells: Urðarbrunnr in the heavens, the spring Hvergelmir and Mímisbrunnr, the well of Mímir. An eagle sat in its branches, the dragon Níðhöggr gnawed below, and a squirrel called Ratatoskr carried spiteful messages between them. Each day the Norns drew water and mud from their well and poured it over the tree so its branches would not rot.
The tree comes to us through two thirteenth century Icelandic books, the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. Aetheryn borrows the idea of one tree at the heart of every realm; the column of crystal in its trunk is the painting's own invention.
Sources
Crystals large enough to walk along
Deep in the Naica mine in Chihuahua, Mexico, lies a cave crossed by beams of selenite, a clear form of gypsum, some more than eleven meters long. A Spanish and Mexican team led from the University of Granada found that they grew from mineral rich water that stayed just below 58 degrees Celsius for many hundreds of thousands of years.
Sources